Stories Of Ourselves - PapaCambridge

2The Hollow of the Three HillsSample‘I am a stranger in this land, as you know,’ said she at length. ‘Whence I comeit matters not; but I have left those behind me with whom my fate was intimatelybound, and from whom I am cut off forever. There is a weight in my bosom thatI cannot away with, and I have come hither to inquire of their welfare.’‘And who is there by this green pool, that can bring thee news from the endsof the Earth?’ cried the old woman, peering into the lady’s face. ‘Not from my lipsmayst thou hear these tidings; yet, be thou bold, and the daylight shall not passaway from yonder hill-top, before thy wish be granted.’‘I will do your bidding though I die,’ replied the lady desperately.The old woman seated herself on the trunk of the fallen tree, threw aside thehood that shrouded her gray locks, and beckoned her companion to draw near.‘Kneel down,’ she said, ‘and lay your forehead on my knees.’She hesitated a moment, but the anxiety, that had long been kindling, burnedfiercely up within her. As she knelt down, the border of her garment was dippedinto the pool; she laid her forehead on the old woman’s knees, and the latter drewa cloak about the lady’s face, so that she was in darkness. Then she heard themuttered words of a prayer, in the midst of which she started, and would havearisen.‘Let me flee, – let me flee and hide myself, that they may not look uponme!’ she cried. But, with returning recollection, she hushed herself, and wasstill as death.For it seemed as if other voices – familiar in infancy, and unforgotten throughmany wanderings, and in all the vicissitudes of her heart and fortune – weremingling with the accents of the prayer. At first the words were faint andindistinct, not rendered so by distance, but rather resembling the dim pages of abook, which we strive to read by an imperfect and gradually brightening light. Insuch a manner, as the prayer proceeded, did those voices strengthen upon the ear;till at length the petition ended, and the conversation of an aged man, and of awoman broken and decayed like himself, became distinctly audible to the lady asshe knelt. But those strangers appeared not to stand in the hollow depth betweenthe three hills. Their voices were encompassed and re-echoed by the walls of achamber, the windows of which were rattling in the breeze; the regular vibrationof a clock, the crackling of a fire, and the tinkling of the embers as they fellamong the ashes, rendered the scene almost as vivid as if painted to the eye. Bya melancholy hearth sat these two old people, the man calmly despondent, thewoman querulous and tearful, and their words were all of sorrow. They spokeof a daughter, a wanderer they knew not where, bearing dishonor along withher, and leaving shame and affliction to bring their gray heads to the grave. Theyalluded also to other and more recent woe, but in the midst of their talk, theirvoices seemed to melt into the sound of the wind sweeping mournfully among theautumn leaves; and when the lady lifted her eyes, there was she kneeling in thehollow between three hills.‘A weary and lonesome time yonder old couple have of it,’ remarked the oldwoman, smiling in the lady’s face. Cambridge University Press 2018Story book.indb 23/6/18 6:52 PM

The Hollow of the Three Hills3Sample‘And did you also hear them!’ exclaimed she, a sense of intolerable humiliationtriumphing over her agony and fear.‘Yea; and we have yet more to hear,’ replied the old woman. ‘Wherefore, coverthy face quickly.’Again the withered hag poured forth the monotonous words of a prayer thatwas not meant to be acceptable in Heaven; and soon, in the pauses of her breath,strange murmurings began to thicken, gradually increasing so as to drown andoverpower the charm by which they grew. Shrieks pierced through the obscurity ofsound, and were succeeded by the singing of sweet female voices, which in theirturn gave way to a wild roar of laughter, broken suddenly by groanings and sobs,forming altogether a ghastly confusion of terror and mourning and mirth. Chainswere rattling, fierce and stern voices uttered threats, and the scourge resounded attheir command. All these noises deepened and became substantial to the listener’sear, till she could distinguish every soft and dreamy accent of the love songs, thatdied causelessly into funeral hymns. She shuddered at the unprovoked wrath whichblazed up like the spontaneous kindling of flame, and she grew faint at the fearfulmerriment raging miserably around her. In the midst of this wild scene, whereunbound passions jostled each other in a drunken career, there was one solemnvoice of a man, and a manly and melodious voice it might once have been. Hewent to and fro continually, and his feet sounded upon the floor. In each memberof that frenzied company, whose own burning thoughts had become their exclusiveworld, he sought an auditor for the story of his individual wrong, and interpretedtheir laughter and tears as his reward of scorn or pity. He spoke of woman’sperfidy, of a wife who had broken her holiest vows, of a home and heart madedesolate. Even as he went on, the shout, the laugh, the shriek, the sob, rose up inunison, till they changed into the hollow, fitful, and uneven sound of the wind, asit fought among the pine-trees on those three lonely hills. The lady looked up, andthere was the withered woman smiling in her face.‘Couldst thou have thought there were such merry times in a madhouse?’inquired the latter.‘True, true,’ said the lady to herself; ‘there is mirth within its walls, but misery,misery without.’‘Wouldst thou hear more?’ demanded the old woman.‘There is one other voice I would fain listen to again,’ replied the lady faintly.‘Then lay down thy head speedily upon my knees, that thou may’st get theehence before the hour be past.’The golden skirts of day were yet lingering upon the hills, but deep shadesobscured the hollow and the pool, as if sombre night were rising thence tooverspread the world. Again that evil woman began to weave her spell. Long didit proceed unanswered, till the knolling of a bell stole in among the intervals ofher words, like a clang that had travelled far over valley and rising ground, andwas just ready to die in the air. The lady shook upon her companion’s knees,as she heard that boding sound. Stronger it grew and sadder, and deepenedinto the tone of a death bell, knolling dolefully from some ivy-mantled tower, Cambridge University Press 2018Story book.indb 33/6/18 6:52 PM

4The Hollow of the Three HillsSampleand bearing tidings of mortality and woe to the cottage, to the hall, and to thesolitary wayfarer, that all might weep for the doom appointed in turn to them.Then came a measured tread, passing slowly, slowly on, as of mourners witha coffin, their garments trailing on the ground, so that the ear could measurethe length of their melancholy array. Before them went the priest, reading theburial service, while the leaves of his book were rustling in the breeze. Andthough no voice but his was heard to speak aloud, still there were revilingsand anathemas, whispered but distinct, from women and from men, breathedagainst the daughter who had wrung the aged hearts of her parents, – the wifewho had betrayed the trusting fondness of her husband, – the mother who hadsinned against natural affection, and left her child to die. The sweeping soundof the funeral train faded away like a thin vapour, and the wind, that just beforehad seemed to shake the coffin pall, moaned sadly round the verge of the Hollowbetween three Hills. But when the old woman stirred the kneeling lady, she liftednot her head.‘Here has been a sweet hour’s sport!’ said the withered crone, chuckling toherself. Cambridge University Press 2018Story book.indb 43/6/18 6:52 PM

The Fall of the House of Usher52mpleThe Fall of the House of Usher(1839)Edgar Allan PoeSon coeur est un luth suspendu;Sitôt qu’on le touche il résonne.De BérangerSaDuring the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year,when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone,on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length foundmyself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy Houseof Usher. I know not how it was – but, with the first glimpse of the building, asense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feelingwas unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, withwhich the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolateor terrible. I looked upon the scene before me – upon the mere house, and thesimple landscape features of the domain – upon the bleak walls – upon the vacanteye-like windows – upon a few rank sedges – and upon a few white trunks ofdecayed trees – with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthlysensation more properly than to the afterdream of the reveller upon opium – thebitter lapse into everyday life – the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was aniciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart – an unredeemed dreariness of thoughtwhich no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. Whatwas it – I paused to think – what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplationof the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple withthe shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fallback upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there arecombinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affectingus, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. Itwas possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars ofthe scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps toannihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined Cambridge University Press 2018Story book.indb 53/6/18 6:52 PM

6The Fall of the House of UsherSamplemy horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffledlustre by the dwelling, and gazed down – but with a shudder even more thrillingthan before – upon the remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and theghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a sojourn ofsome weeks. Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of my boon companionsin boyhood; but many years had elapsed since our last meeting. A letter, however,had lately reached me in a distant part of the country – a letter from him – which,in its wildly importunate nature, had admitted of no other than a personal reply.The MS. gave evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute bodilyillness – of a mental disorder which oppressed him – and of an earnest desire tosee me, as his best, and indeed his only personal friend, with a view of attempting,by the cheerfulness of my society, some alleviation of his malady. It was themanner in which all this, and much more, was said – it was the apparent heart thatwent with his request – which allowed me no room for hesitation; and I accordinglyobeyed forthwith what I still considered a very singular summons.Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I really knew littleof my friend. His reserve had been always excessive and habitual. I was aware,however, that his very ancient family had been noted, time out of mind, for apeculiar sensibility of temperament, displaying itself, through long ages, in manyworks of exalted art, and manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munificent yetunobtrusive charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the intricacies, perhapseven more than to the orthodox and easily recognisable beauties, of musical science.I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact, that the stem of the Usher race, alltime-honoured as it was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch; inother words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always,with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain. It was this deficiency, Iconsidered, while running over in thought the perfect keeping of the character ofthe premises with the accredited character of the people, and while speculatingupon the possible influence which the one, in the long lapse of centuries, might haveexercised upon the other – it was this deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, andthe consequent undeviating transmission, from sire to son, of the patrimony withthe name, which had, at length, so identified the two as to merge the original titleof the estate in the quaint and equivocal appellation of the ‘House of Usher’ – anappellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it,both the family and the family mansion.I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment – that oflooking down within the tarn – had been to deepen the first singular impression.There can be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid increase of mysuperstition – for why should I not so term it? – served mainly to accelerate theincrease itself. Such, I have long known, is the paradoxical law of all sentimentshaving terror as a basis. And it might have been for this reason only, that, when Iagain uplifted my eyes to the house itself, from its image in the pool, there grew inmy mind a strange fancy – a fancy so ridiculous, indeed, that I but mention it to Cambridge University Press 2018Story book.indb 63/6/18 6:52 PM

The Fall of the House of Usher7Sampleshow the vivid force of the sensations which oppressed me. I had so worked uponmy imagination as really to believe that about the whole mansion and domainthere hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity – anatmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reekedup from the decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn – a pestilent andmystic vapour, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued.Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned morenarrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal feature seemed to be thatof an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been great. Minute fungioverspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves.Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of themasonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its stillperfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual stones.In this there was much that reminded me of the specious totality of old wood-workwhich has rotted for long years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance fromthe breath of the external air. Beyond this indication of extensive decay, however,the fabric gave little token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinising observermight have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roofof the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until itbecame lost in the sullen waters of the tarn.Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house. A servant inwaiting took my horse and I entered the Gothic archway of the hall. A valet, ofstealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence, through many dark and intricatepassages in my progress to the studio of his master. Much that I encountered on theway contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I havealready spoken. While the objects around me – while the carvings of the ceilings, thesombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoricarmorial trophies which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to such aswhich, I had been accustomed from my infancy – while I hesitated not to acknowledgehow familiar was all this – I still wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancieswhich ordinary images were stirring up. On one of the staircases, I met the physicianof the family. His countenance, I thought, wore a mingled expression of low cunningand perplexity. He accosted me with trepidation and passed on. The valet now threwopen a door and ushered me into the presence of his master.The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The windows werelong, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the black oaken floor asto be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light madetheir way through the trellised panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct themore prominent objects around; the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach theremoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling.Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse, comfortless,antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about,but failed to give any vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere ofsorrow. An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all. Cambridge University Press 2018Story book.indb 73/6/18 6:53 PM

8The Fall of the House of UsherSampleUpon my entrance, Usher arose from a sofa on which he had been lying atfull length, and greeted me with a vivacious warmth which had much in it, I atfirst thought, of an overdone cordiality – of the constrained effort of the ennuyéman of the world. A glance, however, at his countenance, convinced me of hisperfect sincerity. We sat down; and for some moments, while he spoke not, Igazed upon him with a feeling half of pity, half of awe. Surely, man had neverbefore so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher! It waswith difficulty that I could bring myself to admit the identity of the wan beingbefore me with the companion of my early boyhood. Yet the character of his facehad been at all times remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large,liquid, and luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, butof a surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but with abreadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a finely moulded chin, speaking,in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than web-likesoftness and tenuity; these features, with an inordinate expansion above the regionsof the temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten. Andnow in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these features, and ofthe expression they were wont to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted towhom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous lustreof the eye, above all things startled and even awed me. The silken hair, too, hadbeen suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floatedrather than fell about the face, I could not, even with effort, connect its Arabesqueexpression with any idea of simple humanity.In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an incoherence – aninconsistency; and I soon found this to arise from a series of feeble and futile strugglesto overcome an habitual trepidancy – an excessive nervous agitation. For somethingof this nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by his letter, than by reminiscencesof certain boyish traits, and by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physicalconformation and temperament. His action was alternately vivacious and sullen. Hisvoice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the animal spirits seemed utterlyin abeyance) to that species of energetic concision – that abrupt, weighty, unhurried,a

Stories of Ourselves contains selections of stories set for study for CIE’s O Level, IGCSE, AS and A Level Literature in English examinations. As with its companion volume, Songs of Ourselves (Foundation Books, 2005), the selection goes be